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Canadians owed $1.67 in consumer credit, mortgages, and non-mortgage loans for every dollar of household disposable income in the first quarter of 2017, a slight quarterly decrease as household net worth rose from the end of 2016.

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Canadians owed $1.67 in consumer credit, mortgages and non-mortgage loans for every dollar of household disposable income in the first quarter of 2017, a slight quarterly decrease as household net worth rose from the end of 2016.

That ratio still increased on an annual basis, however. In the first quarter of 2016, Canadians owed about $1.64 per dollar of disposable income, according to Statistics Canada's latest quarterly report on the national balance sheet.

"At the end of the first quarter, the portion that households spent on mortgage principal payments exceeded that spent on mortgage interest payments — the first time this has happened since these statistics were first compiled for the first quarter of 1990."

Canadian household net worth was $287,700 in the first three months of the year. Household sector net worth rose 2.2 per cent in the quarter to $10.533 trillion at market value, as the value of financial assets increased.